Deeplinks Blog posts about Free Speech

Just three months ago, we at EFF expressed our disappointment with Australia's two largest Internet service providers (ISPs), Telstra and Optus, for agreeing to implement a filtering scheme after a filtering bill from the Australian government failed to pass.

Tomorrow, October 11, Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad will have reached the 50th day of his hunger strike. Arrested in March, Sanad was later sentenced, by a military court, to three years in prison for accusing the military of having conducted virginity tests on female protesters (a charge later found to be true) and stating that "the army and the people are not one," a statement that runs counter to much of the sentiment expressed in Tahrir Square throughout January. In August, Sanad began a hunger strike in the hopes that it would "draw public attention to his plight and force the ruling military council to reconsider what he describes as the military’s 'discriminatory' policies," according to Shahira Amin of Index on Censorship.

Chilling Speech Through Violence

Update: A significant edit was made to the original piece on which this commentary is based. See * for additional information.

In a recent Washington Timeseditorial titled “Internet trolls, Anonymity and the First Amendment,” Gayle Falkenthal declared that “the time has come to limit the ability of people to remain anonymous” online.* She argued that any benefit to online pseudonyms has long since dissipated and anonymous commenters have polluted the Internet “with false accusations and name-calling attacks.” Newspapers, she wrote, should ban them entirely.

EFF has long complained about export restrictions by the U.S. Departments of Treasury and Commerce that deny citizens access to vital communications tools. In the past, this has affected, among others, Zimbabwean activists trying to obtain hosting providers, Syrian businesspeople networking on LinkedIn, and ordinary Iranians trying to download web browsers.